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Williams asked Nixon about the spate of shootings , most recently Stephon Clarke on March 18 in Sacramento, California.

On the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., New York gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon joined the "Wendy Williams Show" for her first national television interview since announcing her run and tackled the thorny subject of unarmed black men being shot by police across the nation.

Williams asked Nixon about the spate of shootings, most recently Stephon Clark on March 18 in Sacramento, California. Two officers responding to reports of a man breaking windows fatally shot Clark in his grandparents' backyard saying they thought he was moving toward them with a gun. They found only a cellphone. Clark was shot seven times from behind on the right side of his body and once from the front, a private autopsy found. Police earlier said they had shot at him 20 times.

"There have been so many senseless killings in the news, most recently Stephon Clark," said Williams. "How can we change that?"

"The Clark case is just one of many and every time one comes even thought it doesn't surprise us it's still sickening and devastating," said Nixon.

"Yes, I think it is a black man thing," Nixon said. "Too often our elected leaders will talk about killings when it's children in a school but... when it's young men of color who are being shot by the police and they're unarmed.. if we’re going to say black lives matter we have to mean it and we have to implement change."

Nixon also cited the exclusion of a black female legislative leader from the state's budget negotiations as an example of where the Democratic Party needs to improve when it comes to promoting women leaders.

Nixon called black women the "cornerstone" and "backbone" of the Democratic Party, but added that black women will stop showing up for the Democratic Party "if the Democratic Party doesn't start showing up for them."